Concept plan of proposed complex of 64 single family residential homes to be built on a 35-acre parcel on Cowpath Road at Township Line Road, as presented to Hatfield Township board of commissioners on Dec. 7 2016. Site plan courtesy of Hatfield Township and developed by Kennedy & Associates.
SUBMITTED RENDERING — For Digital First Media

“Times have changed over the years. The farm can no longer remain as a farm. So this is your choice,” said Walter. She described how the Walter family has owned that land since the early 20th century, and longtime owners Stanley and Ruth Walter had previously sold off portions of what was originally a larger parcel, including part that is now a complex for mobile homes next door.

“We feel strongly, as a family, that rezoning the land for housing would be the best use of the land,” she said.

Of the 41-acre parcel owned by the family, roughly five acres closest to Cowpath Road are currently zoned for residential housing, while the remaining 35 acres are zoned for light industrial uses. Back in 2008-09, the family asked for the entire property to be rezoned residential, but also to allow a commercial use for a garden center and store near the intersection.

Now, “we have a plan that is fully intending to be rezoned as RA-1, instead of any commercial component,” Bartle said.

Details of the site layout have also changed over the past decade, Bartle and Kennedy told the board: instead of a retail shop near the southwest corner and homes running along the eastern side of the property near the mobile home complex, the new plan would feature larger lots and a wooded buffer to the east, providing several hundred feet of grass and trees between the new and current homes.

“There is a requirement for 15 percent open space. In this layout, the open space has been concentrated on the east side, up against the mobile home park,” Kennedy said.

Traffic volumes would be “significantly higher” from an industrial project on that site than for residential, Kennedy told the board, and estimated the residential project would create roughly 35 percent of the trips of the industrial. A traffic study developed by the applicant projects just shy of 700 weekly car trips to and from the proposed residential community, compared to nearly 1,900 from the industrial project that could be built.

He added that the location of the parcel next to a residential neighborhood and several miles away from large highways would be less than ideal for any future industrial development — land closer to large highways like Route 309 or the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike would be better, and is not hard to find.

“There is other land available at those locations which is still vacant. That doesn’t make (this) any bigger,” he said.

Robert Rosenthal, a developer with Equitable Land Use which has an agreement of sale to buy the property from the Walter family, said the new homes would likely be between 2,000 and 3,600 square feet and sell in the mid-$400,000 to $500,000 range.

“They are detached, single family dwellings on 12,000-square-foot lots. No twins, there are no townhomes: two-story Colonial-style single family homes,” he said, likely with three or four bedrooms and two-car garages.

Real estate appraiser Michael Samuels told the board there are roughly 400 acres and 500,000 square feet of industrial space currently on the market in the North Penn area, and the Walter site would not be a prime location due to its distance from the highways.

“It is so far removed from major transportation nodes — from the turnpike, from 309 — that you would have to pass a lot of properties in order to get to this one,” he said.

The regional real estate market has shown successful sales of several recent residential projects similar to the one proposed here, he said, and doing so could raise the values of nearby properties.

“It means the open space will be permanently protected, a permanent benefit, to both the new residents and the existing residents in the mobile home park,” he said.

“The residents in the mobile home park have to have it in the backs of their minds that someday, if it’s developed as zoned industrial, they’re going to have an industrial building with truck docks in their backyards,” Samuels said.

Kennedy showed the board and public a concept of an industrial building that could be built, by right, on the property as per the current zoning. The largest building that could be done on such a site would have a footprint of roughly 150,000 square feet — which Kennedy said is just a fraction of the size of other industrial sites, such as one in Upper Macungie Township with a 1 million square foot building used as a distribution center by Home Depot, and a second 600,000 square foot building used as a distribution center for Amazon.com.

“The way the users think about them is how quickly they can get from this building, say with a truck, onto a major road, and be on their way to some other town, some other part of the country, in the shortest, quickest amount of time,” Kennedy said.

A residential use on the site would fit the Montgomery County Planning Commission’s “Montco 2040” regional plan, Kennedy added, and while the land is near the proposed route of the Route 309 Connector between the Northeast Extension and Bethlehem Pike, the Walter site is not as close to that route as other sites would be.

“Realistically, it wouldn’t make a difference. It’s still going to be at the corner of Township Line Road and Cowpath Road — it’s not at 309, and it’s not at the turnpike,” Kennedy said.

Zipfel added that residents with thoughts on the project can share them privately with the commissioners, and can speak publicly during the board’s Jan. 11 meeting, when the public hearing on the rezone will be resumed.

No residents commented during the Dec. 7 meeting, and Zipfel said he suspected “everyone is holding their deepest thoughts and comments until the (Jan. 11) meeting, which is fine.”